Hanging out with my boys : )

My work email has been flooded with messages lately as everyone in the district is preparing to return to work next week.  I am thankful that I get to stay home with my boys for awhile.  Here are some pictures of Paul and Xander chilling at home:

Xander Slideshow

Here is a slideshow of Xander over the last 4 weeks or so: 

Xander's Awesome Musicbox : )

Thanks Pete! It is perfect : )

Drinking from the Bottle!!

Today Xander actually had a meal from the bottle! We had tried to feed him this way a few other times in the last couple weeks with no success. Apparently, changing the nipple to a faster "speed" was the way to go. We were so excited that we took a picture : )

Hopefully this won't hinder his awesome ability to eat with Sarah. We prolly won't be feeding him bottle style too often, just enough to give him some practice for when Sarah goes back to work.

Pacifier Xander

We don't know if he really likes this yet, but he had it in his mouth for more than two seconds without screaming and that was worth recording!

Mostly Pics Today

We've been sleeping alot these past few days, not much to say but we took pictures to post : )

Xander Apollo is 1 Month Old Today!!

Today marks the end of the first month of Xander's life. The time has both flown by and crawled to a stand-still. It has been a hot, wet summer with plenty of bugs to battle and freezing public air conditioning. We've had quite a few visitors and are expecting quite a few more. All of it has been amazing!

Love,

Paul & Sarah

More Grandparents and family!!!

Here's a picture of the Tielke side of the family taken about 4 weeks ago! Xander's Uncle Jack is holding him the night that he was born. Thanks Kate for taking the picture!

Here's Xander with cousins Dan and Jared from Lincoln!

Grandparents Visiting : )

These are the Morrison grandparents with Xander for the first time : )








Here's Uncle Peedge with Xander. He just flew in today from Denver.

Xander has been very awesome so far visiting with the Morrisons from Wyoming. He has been very alert and sociable. I think everyone is having a good time hanging out with Xander.

This is Molly with the G parents from my side!

Reading

This is Xander focusing on the book he's currently reading. He tends to respond more to the circles than the squares or stripes. When he is feeding, Sarah has been reading him Roald Dahl's "Fantastic Mr. Fox" out loud. His Morrison grandparents came today, we will say more about that later : )

Nap Time

After a night with VERY short sleep-time intervals and a morning of lawn-mowing everyone in the house crashed this afternoon. Molly seemed especially tired, she didn't leave the couch for several hours : ) She was doing laps around the house the whole time the grass was getting cut. We watched a couple shows on DVD and napped until evening. I'm still half asleep while I'm typing this! We are going to do a quick diaper change and feed Xander his dinner, hoping that he falls back asleep so we can all sneak into bed early.

Paul or Sarah?

Teaching genetics while being pregnant this past school year was interesting--we had lots of conversations that haven't come up in previous years.  My students seemed as curious as I was regarding my future baby's physical appearance, and we predicted many of his traits.  At this age, I find it difficult to look at Xander and try to decide if he looks more like one of us.  Xander has Paul's widow's peak hairline and "butt chin," his hair is the color of Paul's for now, and he will probably have Paul's brown eyes.  He has the same ear lobes (unattached) as I do, and the same blood type (O positive), but I'm not sure of any others yet.

I have taken a sudden interest in what Paul and I looked like as babies.  Here are some pictures:

Here is 5-week-old Paul:

 Paul at 6 weeks:

 Sarah at 3 weeks:

Another of me, but I'm not sure how old I was in this one:
(Mom, can you help me out?)

New vid of X with hiccups ; )

This video was taken during Xander's longest visit to his crib to date! So far he only goes about ten minutes without letting us know that we are supposed to be holding him.



Yesterday morning Xander went on a walk with us through the new neighborhood. We realized that the temperature was tolerable and took advantage! I bet it got ten degrees hotter by the time we finished our little adventure around the block. It has been crazy hot here lately and we even had a brief, severe thunderstorm the other day with gust of wind up to 80mph!

Paul out!

3 Week Growth Spurt

We have been surviving a three week growth spurt in the past few days and everyone is crazy tired! On top of that, I have been teaching a summer workshop at PKI for hyperactive middle school kids. I am happy that today is the last day for that. After class yesterday, we went to our pediatrician just to check on some digestive problems that Xander has been experiencing as of late. They told us to keep an eye on him and Sarah has made a few slight changes in her diet.

Bath Time!!!

Xander is so fresh and so clean! He didn't seem to mind the bath, but he was cold after it was over, and he let us know : )

New video!

This video is made from the Q3 Zoom that I borrowed from the studio at work. I thought my voice would sound a little more like it does in my head. It doesn't. It sounds much more manly inside my skull. Anyway, we have been using the headphones and the ipod to help Xander relax and are pleased with the results so far. The track he listens to was taken from a free trial CD that some people mailed to me and I put it in a DAW, cut out the sales pitch at the beginning and looped it for an hour. He never listens for that long. It's more like a 5 minute meditation session before he just zonks out completely : ) I guess the CD track is supposed to tune your alpha brain waves or something using distant future technology. The people trying to sell the "Holotapes" say that using them can help you attain the same zen-like states of mind that life-long Buddhist monks achieve. I don't know if that's true but Xander falls asleep and that's good enough for me.

Xander in the Listening Booth

Today we tried out the head phones on Xander to see if they would help him relax. I think it worked as you can tell by the pic : ) He is still going to have to grow a little more before the headphones will stay on by themselves, so for now we just hold them on his head when he is feeling like jamming out to some tunes.

Today was also the first day of teaching a summer workshop since Xander's arrival and it seemed like the day was stretched out to infinity!

Paul out!

More pictures!

Saturday at home

Today Xander has been a sleepy boy, which is unusual because we both thought that he got lots of sleep last night as well. He must be gathering energy for a growth spurt! It's been kind of nice watching him sleep so much after the last few days of making noise. It has been a lazy Saturday for all of us. We didn't even get out of our pj's today : ) Hopefully tonight won't be a crying marathon. We have our fingers crossed.

I do not have a mullet

I feel like I should explain the picture from the previous post. There is an Abby Road poster in the back round that makes my hair look disproportionately long in the back. I do not have a mullet. Those are trees. Also, I was just posing with a goofy face, I am not disgruntled in this picture. I thought it was an entertaining picture so I posted it. Having said that, it is 2 a. m. and we are feeding Xander at the moment. Sarah says, "We didn't post a new blog today (yesterday)" so here I am, posting a blog in the middle of the night. Not much to say really. We did some afternoon napping today and I dropped off the keys to our old place. Interestingly, someone has just stolen the central air-conditioning unit out of the back yard of at the old place within the last few days. I guess they realized no one was living there at the time. Kinda glad we left that neighborhood.

First Walk

Yesterday, we took Xander out on an expedition around our neighborhood in his stroller. It was the first time we used the stroller, and we were a little wary of how he would react. He seemed to enjoy the trip though, so tonight we are going to pack him up and take him to the grocery store when it might be a little less crowded and do a some shopping.

It will be nice to leave the house a bit even though we have been doing a good job of keeping the cabin fever at bay ; )